Focus Features Acquires Bastille Day, Starring Idris Elba

Focus Features announced today that the company has acquired North American distribution rights to the action thriller Bastille Day, starring Idris Elba and Adèle Exarchopoulos. The film will be directed by James Watkins from a script by Andrew Baldwin. Philippe Rousselet is producing the project via his Vendome Pictures banner, along with Steve Golin, David Kanter, and Bard Dorros for Anonymous Content. Principal photography of the film is slated to commence later this summer.

Studiocanal is financing the project as well as handling international sales and will distribute the film in France, UK, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand.

Peter Schlessel, CEO of Focus Features, said, “We are all excited to be working with James, these accomplished producers, and the incomparable Idris Elba on what will surely be a thrill ride set in Paris, one of the greatest cities in the world.”

Rousselet added, “We are all thrilled to have Focus Features distribute our film. We could not have dreamed of a better home for it and we look forward to collaborating with Peter and his fantastic team.”

“Anonymous Content has always had a great working relationship with Focus Features, and we have long admired Peter,” stated Dorros and Kanter jointly. “We’re thrilled to be in business with him as we now have a perfect partner to distribute this film.”

“We are delighted to have found the perfect domestic home for ‘Bastille Day’ with the talented team at Focus Features,” said Olivier Courson, Chairman and CEO of Studiocanal. “Together with Philippe Rousselet at Vendome, we look forward to making a high quality action-packed thriller for the world to enjoy.”

Bastille Day, which Anonymous Content developed with Baldwin, is a thriller set in Paris in which a rogue CIA agent must team up with an unsuspecting American con-artist living abroad to thwart a terrorist attack on French soil.